Entertainment

Fearing & White make Grande Prairie stop Sunday

Almost a year after they released their debut album, Fearing & White are returning to Alberta, eager for the chance to play for more prairie-minded audiences.

"There is a real interest in this kind of music, so it's always great to go play there," says Stephen Fearing, who makes up one-half of the musical duo.

"If you play roots music in Canada, then you got to Alberta at some point; it's the place to go. It's certainly more lucrative there than where I live in Nova Scotia."

Both Fearing and Andy White have found success with solo and band careers. It was their love of music that turned a friendship into an artistic collaboration.

"Andy and I connected over in Ireland. I grew up in Dublin, he grew up in Belfast, and so we had a lot in common from the beginning," Fearing says.

"We spent quite a bit of time remembering really bad television commercials, all that stuff. The influences, a lot of them are from that side of the water."

White, who currently calls Melbourne, Australia, home, visits this hemisphere as often as he can. It took the pair eight years to write the album, a luxury that White still recalls fondly.

"We're very lucky, with your first album you get like, 20 years to write it, but your second album, it's about two," he says.

"From then on it's like that, but because Stephen and I only saw each other for about a week or 10 days every year, we'd maybe write two or three songs at a time."

That creative process, although lengthy, proved to be just what they needed. Both also contributed to the album instrumentally and it was recorded in a matter of weeks.

"It's very intense, with very focused bursts of creativity. And for most of it, there was no real agenda except that we realized that we like writing songs together," Fearing says.

"It's not a hobby, but rather a thing to do. Instead of going to play badminton or go drinking, it was like, let's write songs."

Grande Prairie is the second stop on their tour, which revisits a number of spots across the province. Fearing and White agree that their brand of roots and folk music has a strong fan base in Alberta.

"Alberta is a wealthy province and they put money into arts, so there's definitely that. Alberta has a reputation of being the Wild West, rough and tough, but there's an arts scene in Alberta because there's enough money to go around," Fearing says.

As people who've been making a living as artists for some time, White believes that there's always room for growth.

"I started off not having a clue how to do it, I was just guessing really. You just hope you get closer and that the shows get better," he says.

"Most rock critics always like you first thing and then never really pay as much attention as they do to your early work. I think if you're a musician, singer or writer, it works the other way around. I think I'm still improving."

For Fearing, there is something to be said for the energy of youth, but he's also partial to the knowledge he's gained over the years.

"When you're young, there are no holds barred. The trick is to be able to keep that spontaneity going and entertain all the lessons and skills that you've learned over the years," he says.

"It's not just about how to entertain a group of people, but how to write a song that really interests you. It's walking that line between keeping the naivety going and enjoying the hard-won lessons."

Fearing & White will be in Grande Prairie at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Second Street Theatre. Tickets are $28 in advance, $30 at the door and can be purchased by calling the box office at 780-538-1616.